


Lost in Muggle London

by phoenixgal



Series: Scenes from a Life [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bad Sex, Bisexuality, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 16:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixgal/pseuds/phoenixgal
Summary: Ginny needs to get out of the house after the war is over, but in doing so she realizes things are complicated between her and Harry.





	

“Come on,” Ginny said, marching out of the house. “If I have to listen to Mum talk about the food leftover from the funeral for one more minute, I'll go mad.”

“Where did you have in mind?”

“Anywhere!”

She glanced back at him as she marched through the fields and toward the village. Harry looked nearly as forlorn as George did this week, though considerably less drunk. Part of her wanted to leave him behind for that reason. Everyone in the house was being so serious. She wanted to ride her broomstick and cannonball into a lake or scale Gryffindor tower or run all the way to Scotland. Charlie and Bill and Mum and the rest may have been content to sit around the house and mourn but she thought if she didn't do something soon, she really might go completely mental.

Harry nodded and caught up with her.

For a little bit, they walked through the field toward the village, aimlessly. Ginny let out an exasperated sigh. She didn't know where to go other than a vague sense of away, but it was obvious Harry was following her lead. She felt like she was leading a sad puppy.

“Take me somewhere Muggle,” she suddenly demanded. Forget her broom. She just wanted to be somewhere where no one knew about the war, where no one was dead, where everything was normal.

Harry caught up with her among the tall late spring grass. He looked unsure but then he grabbed her hand.

The next thing she knew they were in London in an alley. They had gone from an empty field to masses of people walking past, all in drab Muggle clothes. Ginny glanced down at herself. She would probably fit in with her plain shirt and jeans.

Harry looked around at the people streaming by. “Um, I suppose we could go get a coffee,” he said.

Ginny wasn't totally sure what that even was, but it sounded brilliant so she nodded enthusiastically.

Harry walked a little ways. They had apparently come out in some sort of shopping area. From what little Ginny knew about the Muggle world, it seemed like it might be a bit posh. Certainly the shops were shiny enough and the Muggle clothes in the windows looked sleek and dressy. They passed a dozen shops, walking up the road. Ginny's eyes kept darting around, watching the cars go by and the people stroll. Yes, this was perfect. Anonymous. She felt the way she usually felt in the Muggle world, slightly daring and adventurous.

Harry led her into a little cafe that was nearly as shiny and new looking as the dress shops. The pubs in Hogsmeade and along Diagon Alley had all probably looked the same since her parents were kids or even before. Had the Three Broomsticks ever been redecorated? Muggle restaurants apparently looked like they had been made with some sort of fake metals and lots of that magical Muggle material plastic just a year before. Maybe it had been.

Ginny watched Harry as he ordered two coffees, which turned out to be a hot brown drink in a mug. He looked like he wanted to run away and hide, but he stood his ground. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” she said. So he ordered some food, things she wasn't totally sure what it even was, which was also perfect. He gave her some Muggle money to pay and she felt delighted by getting to hand over the foreign looking paper bills and getting a handful of change.

The coffee was warm and bitter. She didn't think she'd ever drank anything hot on a warm day like this, but all the Muggles seemed to be doing it and Harry downed his fairly quickly, saying little, his eyes darting around the small room with large glass windows and about a dozen tables.

The woman behind the counter rang a bell and Harry brought a bright orange tray with food on it over. Some sort of sandwich and a large pile of thinly cut fried potatoes that turned out to be salty and delicious.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, dipping one into the white goop that came with it.

“Chips,” Harry said, looking amused for the first time. Ginny could only assume from the way he looked at her that this was some way that Muggles often ate their potatoes.

“Well, I think they're brilliant,” she said. “Muggle food looks brilliant in general. I didn't realize it was so different.”

“It's not really,” Harry said. “Muggle food is a bit more international. Chips are American, I think.”

“You must have missed this stuff when you came to Hogwarts,” she observed, thrilled that he was actually talking to her, hoping to keep the conversation moving.

“I was just happy to be fed decently for once,” Harry said quietly. “The Dursleys never let me have enough to eat.”

Ginny had grown up thinking she was poor, mostly because the Weasleys were one of the most shabby of the pure blood families in the wizarding world, but she couldn't quite imagine not having enough to eat. Even with five hungry older brothers, her parents always made sure they were well fed. Every once in awhile, Harry said things like this and it always made her deeply uncomfortable.

“But you can have it now, whenever you want,” she said.

“I'm not really hungry,” he said.

Ginny munched on another chip, trying it in the glop of red stuff in a little cup, trying to figure out what to say. They sat in silence with only the sounds of the other people around them for quite awhile as Ginny ate and Harry scanned the cafe over and over.

The door opened, ringing a bell and Harry jumped up to his feet, then sat back down again.

Ginny furrowed her brow. The whole point of getting out of the house with Harry was to get away from her mum's constant hovering and everyone's constant grieving and crying and have an actual conversation and feel normal. But Harry was being anything but normal. Whatever ease that had existed between them back when they'd dated at Hogwarts seemed to have evaporated. And Harry himself was behaving distracted and jumpy. Ginny felt irrationally angry about it. Hadn't they finally, miraculously defeated the Dark Lord? Weren't they free now? Hadn't all Harry's reasons for leaving her finally disappeared? Then why couldn't they just have an afternoon together. And why did he have to behave like this?

“Um, Harry...” she tried to figure out how to ask about whatever it was she needed to ask about. Why had he jumped up or did he want to leave.

“Death Eaters attacked us in a Muggle cafe not too far from here when we ran from the wedding last summer,” Harry said suddenly. “They killed a Muggle and got the jump on us.”

“Oh,” Ginny said.

“Do you mind if we get out of here?” Harry asked.

Ginny dropped the potato she had been holding. “Yeah, all right then.” The food was less than half finished. She had only tasted her coffee, though she wasn't sure if she wanted more. Without asking, Harry took hers and drank deeply from it.

“It's kind of an acquired taste,” he said.

They walked for a long time. Ginny wanted to tell him to take her home. Her own apparation skills were limited. She should have been able to do lessons at Hogwarts the previous year, but so little learning had happened that the regular lessons hadn't taken place. She wasn't licensed yet.

At some point, they turned a corner and the street suddenly looked familiar. “This is the old Order headquarters,” she said in surprise.

Harry shrugged. “It wasn't far. I thought we could check out my dubious inheritance.”

She had forgotten that Harry had inherited this place. As they walked in, she realized it was, amazingly, in even worse shape than the summer she had spent there back before her fourth year. Half of the back wall to the garden from the sitting room was gone and most of the windows were smashed. There were piles of trash on the floor leading up into the stairwell. As soon as they walked in, she could see doxies in several corners scurry out of their way. And, of all things, she saw that the portrait of Walburga Black had finally been destroyed. The frame that she remembered having to keep covered so she wouldn't scream was now torn and the portrait gone.

Harry looked oddly more relaxed there as he surveyed the damage.

“What do you think happened here?” Ginny asked after they had poked their heads into most of the downstairs rooms.

“The ministry,” Harry said. “We were hiding here for a little while but we got seen. I'm not too surprised.”

“Oh,” Ginny said. These dribs and drabs of Harry's experience in the last year kept coming out, either from Harry himself or from Ron or Hermoine, who talked in hushed tones about it all. Ginny felt closed out. She hadn't minded so much when Harry left. She'd been oddly proud to just have something to do in the war. The something she could do was not make drama about their break up and support him even though he had to go away. It felt very grown up, a bit like a heroine in a romance novel, sending her husband off to war. But now that he was back and they'd had these radically different horrors shoved at them for a year, she didn't feel like a grown up heroine in a romance at all. She felt like a child and like Harry had grown up without her.

This was exactly what she hadn't wanted from the day. She didn't want to think. She didn't want to wallow anymore. Before Hermoine had left with Ron for parts unknown, she had said something to Ginny about the need to “process.” Ginny was sick of everyone needing to process. Couldn't they just all move on already?

Under any other circumstances, Ginny realized that being alone with Harry in a relatively safe space for a long period of time would mean she'd want to get in some decent snogging time. They had wandered upstairs so Ginny took his hand and pulled him into the bedroom she had shared with Hermione all those summers ago.

“Um, what's in here…?” Harry asked, looking mildly confused.

“Just remembering my bedroom here,” Ginny said. “It doesn't look too bad.”

She wrapped her arms around him. She could do this. She could make him forget everything and remember her. And she could show she wasn't a child. She had wanted to have him alone for a long time now. In the darkest parts of the year, when Goyle had been trying to grope her in the hallways every other day and she'd taken beatings from the Carrows more than once, she had let this be her fantasy. On some nights, when she was afraid that the dormitory charms wouldn't hold, she'd slipped into the boys' dorms and curled up in Harry's bed. She knew Neville had seen her and said nothing. He would protect her if need be. And then she had quietly rubbed herself to a quiet climax and thought about how things would be better one day when Harry came back.

Harry tensed in her arms but then relaxed a little and they began to kiss.

It wasn't the carefree kisses of more than a year before, when Harry used to snog her on the Hogwarts grounds, leaving her constantly breathless and wanting more. This felt almost like kissing a different boy. He was taller so he leaned over her, giving their kiss a different angle. But it was more. He was kissing her, but he wasn't totally there. It wasn't like before.

Ginny ignored that feeling. She pulled his shirt from where it was tucked in and ran her hands up his chest. He was so skinny that his chest was nearly concave at the center. She ran her fingers over his nipples, feeling like she was doing something forbidden. Under her touch, she felt him shiver despite the late spring warmth in the room. He shook slightly and she felt empowered to do more.

Ginny pulled her own shirt over her head and unfastened her bra. She slid out of her jeans, only leaving her knickers on. Harry watched her with wide eyes and she smiled. Yes, this was what she wanted. This was better than riding her broom over a lake or scaling a tower. She wanted to have sex so much. She wanted Harry, wanted to solidify their relationship.

She took his hand and pulled him over to the bed. For a moment, he looked somewhere between awed and confounded, but then he also removed his shirt and his trousers and sat next to her.

“Gin...” he said.

“Shh,” she said. “Why talk about it?”

“Because...”

“But we both know where things stand. I love you.”

“I love you too, Ginny,” he said, but he didn't touch her.

Ginny climbed over Harry to straddle him. She rested on her knees and felt the bloom of arousal run through her. She grabbed his hand and brought it to her lips, kissing his fingers and then placing them on her breast.

She felt gratified that he began to touch. They had done this before, more than a year ago, fumbling in the dark, Harry's hands up her shirt, stroking and touching her. He hadn't been the first boy she'd let touch her either, but she had visions sometimes that he would be the last. That they would marry and live happily ever after, once the war was over. Now it was over. This should be the start of their happily ever after.

Harry's thumbs flicked over her nipples and Ginny felt a wave of pleasure run through her. She squeezed the muscles between her legs, feeling Harry's narrow hips between them.

They rolled together and Ginny pulled off her own knickers and wrapped her legs around Harry's thigh, squeezing and desperately trying to rub against him. She pulled him over her into another long kiss and felt the stirrings of climax inside her.

She'd never come anywhere near this close to sex with any of the boys she'd dated, but she'd also never had a whole adult free house to herself with a boy either. This felt so natural. And so perfect. Ginny moaned and reached her hands under the waist of Harry's pants. She felt the curve of his arse and slid her hand along his hip.

They continued like that for awhile, touching and caressing. Harry kept shivering above her and she felt herself gasping with the pleasure of it. This was it, her mind kept screaming at her. Sex. She was going to do it. The anticipation was making her want to hyperventilate. It was also, she could tell, making her very wet. She could feel the way the dampness between her legs had rubbed onto the front of Harry's thigh where she gripped around him.

Finally she forced herself to stop rutting against him and spread her legs in invitation. She felt so open, so trusting. There was no way this wouldn't be perfect, she thought.

She pulled down Harry's pants and gripped his hips to her. Now they were both naked.

“Is this… is it… is it all right?” Harry asked as he rolled off to pull his underpants off all the way.

“Yes,” Ginny said. “Please.”

And then his fingers were at her entrance, and then his penis. Harry held himself there.

Ginny squirmed, wanting more. She felt him holding himself there and she tried to rub against him. He pushed against her, fingers still holding himself and she began to realize something was wrong. Where he rubbed against her, she could feel he was soft.

Their eyes met in a moment of panic and Ginny didn't know what to do. Hadn't she done all the things she was meant to do? Was she really supposed to do anything other than make herself available and spread her legs?

“Harry,” she said, her voice coming out shakier than she intended.

And then he was pushing off her. He sat with his knees up and his head bowed between them, shaking.

Ginny felt incredibly exposed then, and not in an arousing way like before. She struggled to cover herself with her hands then reached for her knickers, pulling them on quickly and grabbing for her shirt from the floor. She didn't even bother with the bra but shoved it in her jeans pocket as she pulled them on.

Harry stood then, still naked, and yelled at her. “Just, go away!”

“I love you,” she said, but she heard her own voice as just a tiny squeak. As she turned and fled the room, she saw Harry pick up one of the broken bed rungs from the floor and fling it at the wall so hard she saw dust fly.

Ginny ran out of the house and onto the Muggle street, dashing forward and running up the street, just wanting to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible.

He hadn't wanted her. He was a bloke. Blokes were all supposed to be mad for sex all the time, especially ones their age. But he hadn't wanted her. Ginny felt the tears of confusion and anger begin to well up and she pressed them back down.

She ran for a long time, past hundreds of Muggles in this crowded city. Until finally she realized that the sun was beginning to go down and if she didn't do something, she'd be lost in Muggle London in the middle of the night.

She had her wand, but she wasn't sure what good it would do exactly in terms of getting her home. She had a couple of sickles in her pocket. Feeling inside, she realized she still had the Muggle money that the clerk had given back was still in her pocket as well. She knew the sign for the Underground so she backtracked to the last entrance she had seen and went inside.

She knew the name of the stop near Diagon Alley, but it took a very long time to find it on the large map. Then she had to watch the Muggles buy their tickets from some sort of machines for several long minutes before a young woman who had been begging at the entrance took pity on her and asked did she need some help. Once Ginny had a card, she gave the woman the rest of the Muggle coins and did her best to make her way back to the wizarding world.

It was dark when she wandered down Diagon Alley. She hadn't been in months and was surprised how many shops were boarded up or damaged. The ones that were still open were closing up for the night and she saw construction happening to repair a few places, the workers magically manipulating bricks and beams into place.

The door was locked on Wealeys' Wizarding Wheezes, but she could see the assistant through the glass and knocked until she came to the door.

The witch recognized her. “Your brother's in the apartment,” she said, cracking the door open.

“He is?” Ginny was surprised. She had thought George was still back at the Burrow. She'd only come here because she thought she could use the Floo in the upstairs apartment to get home. “Alone?”

The young woman nodded and pursed her lips together.

“Shite,” Ginny said. She went inside and through the back up to the apartments, knocking on the door at the top.

“Go away!” George shouted, his voice slurred.

“I can't,” Ginny replied. “I don't have any way to get home.”

“Ginny? What the...” She heard scuffling and then the door opened to reveal a very disheveled George in slightly stained robes, still holding a bottle of firewhiskey. “What happened to you?” he asked. “Mum was so angry she even asked me if I knew where you'd got off to.”

“You're pissed,” Ginny accused as she went inside, letting him close the door behind her. He had been sober the day before, at the funeral. She wasn't sure why she thought he wouldn't just get drunk again, but obviously he had.

George shrugged in an exaggerated gesture. “So. Sides, what are you doing here?”

Ginny started to tell him it was none of his business, but then she sank down on the stuffed chair and began to spill instead. Wanting to get out of the house, needing to be somewhere else away from the grief, trying to seduce Harry in the torn up old house on Grimmauld Place.

“Why didn't he want me, George?” she asked, her tears now flowing. “Am I…? Am I hideous or something? Am I… I don't understand. He said he loved me.” She looked up at her brother, who had put his bottle down and was pressing a hand to his temple. “Fuck, I'm sorry. This is all so stupid, isn't it? What with Fred gone and so many people dead and...” She felt her tears turn angrier and more desperate.

George pulled out his wand, but then looked at it and set it back down and fumbled around in the kitchen for a minute, coming back with a pile of wrinkled napkins. “Didn't trust myself to summon tissues,” he said as she grabbed one and wiped her face. He also looked red faced but she wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or the grief or both.

“Want a pint?” he asked, gesturing to the bottle.

“What? Really?”

“You're of age now,” he said. “And fuck it, you just fought in a fucking war. You want a drink, have a drink.” He paused, sitting back down on the sofa. “I don't think I have any glasses though.”

Ginny half laughed but she grabbed the bottle from the table between them and brought it to her lips. She had tried a few clandestine sips in the past, but this time she took a full swig. The firewhiskey burned her throat and made her eyes water more. She set the bottle down and blew her nose.

George snorted. “I think Fred won the bet.”

Her eyes snapped up.

“We had a lot of bets going all the time,” George said. “This one was whether Harry fancied blokes.”

Ginny felt her eyes grow wide. “Oh,” she said. She grabbed the bottle and drank deeply a second time, this time feeling the burn and feeling a small buzz in her head and a sort of lightness. “But… why would he have led me on for so long. I don't...” She shook her head. “Shite.”

“You can say that again,” George said. “I could be wrong. Or, Fred could have been. Just… Dunno.”

“Oh.” It fit but it didn't fit. She didn't know what had happened exactly, but suddenly she felt bad for leaving him there alone. And bad that George was here alone.

“Go use Lightning to send Mum and Dad an owl,” George said. “Then you can finish getting soused and sleep here. I have a… a brilliant hang up… hang over potion you can have tomorrow.”

Ginny laughed and more tears came out, but she stood up and did as he suggested. When she got back, George had found glasses and poured her a generous one of the firewhiskey and he was drinking something else that looked equally potent.

She felt so many emotions brewing underneath the surface, all of them struggling to overtake her. There was a sort of numbness from the firewhiskey and she knew it was an escape, but she was beginning to think George had the right idea.

“When will it be better?” she asked, sitting on the sofa next to her brother.

“Hell if I know,” he said. “Eventually. Never. Soon. I dunno.”


End file.
